Leviathan Wakes is a science fiction novel by James S. A. Corey, the pen name of American writers Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.
Leviathan Wakes is set in a future where humanity has colonized much of the Solar System, facilitated by the invention of the Epstein Drive, a fusion-powered engine capable of producing continuous acceleration.
Earth (governed by the United Nations) and the Martian Congressional Republic act as competing superpowers, maintaining an uneasy military alliance in order to exert dual hegemony over the peoples of the Asteroid belt, known as "Belters".
These people live within space stations built into the interior of asteroids and carry out the gritty, blue-collar work that provides the system with essential natural resources.
Belters, whose bodies tend to be thin and elongated owing to their low-gravity environments, are largely marginalized by the rest of the Solar System polity.
The ice hauling ship Canterbury is en route from Saturn's rings to Ceres when it encounters a distress signal.
They discover an abandoned transport vessel called the Scopuli, and find that the distress beacon which lured them is fake and contains Martian technology.
Holden makes another public broadcast sharing this information, hoping to ease the tensions created by his prior implication of Mars.
On Ceres Station, detective Joe Miller is illicitly contracted to locate Julie Mao, the daughter of very wealthy Lunar citizens, and send her back to her family against her will.
On her phone Miller finds logs detailing the progression of her affliction, which seems to be fueled by exposure to energy and radiation, and the coordinates of an asteroid where one of the ships that attacked the Canterbury is docked.
Miller and Holden discover that the radiation alert has been faked by Eros's security contractor, the Earth-based company Protogen, and that people in the shelters have in fact been infected with the same disease as Julie.
To this end they had carried out the false flag attack on the Canterbury in order to start a war which would distract the Solar System from the criminal operation on Eros.
Realizing that it is likely that the Protomolecule will be sought after by malicious actors in the future, the OPA and Miller plan to crash a large ship into Eros to propel it into the Sun.
In Chapter 17 of the novel, for example, a crew on the run, led by earther Jim Holden, is given command of a state-of-the-art Martian frigate.
[17] Later additions to the series include Nemesis Games, Babylon's Ashes, Persepolis Rising, Tiamat's Wrath, and finally Leviathan Falls.
Released on November 27, 2012, "Drive" was originally published as part of the sci-fi anthology Edge of Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan.
Realizing any rescue vehicle would be unable to catch up due to the incredible fuel requirements of doing so, Epstein accepts his fate and reflects that he has opened a new chapter in space travel as he blacks out.